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Jflakmg tfje Jkst of Cfring* Veriest 


THE TITLES READY 
The Point of View 
A Talk on Relaxation 
Mental Hygiene in Everyday Living 

Decorated. Each, 35 cents net 


A. C. McCLURG & CO., Chicago 












Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 
1909 

Published April 3, 1909 


Part of the material in this Essay originally appeared in 
Good Housekeeping, and is here used by 
courtesy of the Editor 


The University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A. 


LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Co Dies Received 

APR 9 1W9 

Copyrignt Entry 

CuaA.9, I Id? 

GUASS No. 

















A TALK ON 
^ RELAXATION 

The church clinics established in con¬ 
nection with the far-reaching movement to 
unite religion, medicine, and psychology in 
staying the progress of nervous disorders 
have relieved hundreds of nervous sufferers. 
They have served also as a kind of experi¬ 
mental laboratory to show what habits of 
thought and action are best to prevent ner¬ 
vous diseases and to open up powers and 
capabilities that give to weary sufferers life 
more abundantly. 

Not long ago a lady with a strained, tired 
face hurried breathlessly into the chapel of 
St. Paul’s church, in Chicago, on one of the 
I 7 ] 



A TALK ON RELAXATION 


+ > .- " C+ 

clinic days, threw off her coat, rushed into 
the next room to join the class in deep 
breathing, as if she had ten seconds to catch 
the last train for home, and went through 
her exercises during the first few minutes 
with the jerkiness of a jointed doll moved 
by machinery. Gradually, as she followed 
the teacher’s rhythmic movements accom¬ 
panying the inhaling and exhaling of long, 
quiet breaths, her own movements became 
slower and more harmonious. The tense 
expression of her face died out, and when 
the exercises were over she sat down with 
a long, relaxed sigh of relief. 

“ I have just been driven to death! ” she 
explained. “This is the first quiet moment 
I have known for a week. I have had a 
woman cleaning the house; the children’s 
sewing had to be done, and a thousand and 
[ 8 ] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


♦ ? .-- . (♦ 

one other things. I’m just worn out, and 
there is so much to do still that it makes me 
perfectly frantic! ” The strained, troubled 
expression came back to her face, and she 
sat forward on her chair with all her muscles 
rigid. 

It was the old story, in another setting, 
of the proverbial worrier who wailed one 
Sunday morning at breakfast: “ Here it’s 
Sunday, with dinner and supper to get and 
church to go to twice; and to-morrow’s 
Monday, with a great big washing; and the 
next day’s Tuesday, with all the ironing to 
do; and then Wednesday, with more iron¬ 
ing and the baking; and Thursday, with 
all the cleaning; and Friday, with the house 
to sweep; and Saturday, with baking again; 
and there’s a whole week gone without 
a stroke of work done.” Then the poor 
[9] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 
#-■.- ..—€ ♦ 

woman sat down before her unwashed 
dishes and wept. 

The lady at the clinic fortunately had a 
sense of humor, and when she heard this 
story she laughed, and being also endowed 
with quick perceptions, she saw the appli¬ 
cation. “I understand,” she admitted. “I 
am doing everything fifty times — forty-nine 
times in my mind and once actually. It 
truly is a foolish waste of energy.” She was 
initiated into the practice of relaxation by 
being made to sit back in her chair com¬ 
fortably, letting the chair bear her weight 
instead of trying, though unconsciously, to 
hold herself on the chair with muscles taut 
and rigid, as if she were the middle one of 
three on a narrow carriage-seat, in duty 
bound not to let her weight press on her 
companions. She needed greatly to learn 

[ io ] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


how to rest in her leisure intervals because 
she was a busy woman with many demands 
upon her. These she was meeting with so 
much stress and vehemence that she was 
overdrawing her account of nervous strength, 
and rapidly approaching disaster. It was 
important for her to practise economy all 
along the line, and the first thing was to let 
her muscles go off duty when there was 
nothing for them to do, instead of keeping 
them contracted uselessly. 

She was not slow to appreciate the 
physical advantage of resting with relaxed 
muscles. “But how,” she asked, “can it 
have any effect mentally? How can relax¬ 
ing physically help me, as you say, not to 
worry ? ” 

The relation between the body and 
mental states is very close, and the action 
In] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


3 ^. .- =♦ 

of one on the other very marked. A well- 
attested fact of psychology is that every 
thought has a physical registration. This 
has been proved over and over again in 
modern laboratories for experimental psy¬ 
chology, in ways that seem little short of 
marvellous to the layman. There are ex¬ 
quisitely adjusted instruments to register 
thought and to show the effects of different 
thoughts and emotions on the body. No 
matter how wooden the face, how immobile 
the expression, these instruments are like 
spies on the hidden selves of the subjects, 
laying bare the working of their minds. 
Angelo Mosso, the well-known Italian psy¬ 
chologist, goes so far as to say that seeing 
the curves these instruments record of one 
single pulsation of the hand or foot, he can 
tell whether the subject at that time was 


[ 12] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


« =.=.===== » 

well fed or fasting, asleep or awake, warm 
or cold, tired or rested, thoughtful or absent- 
minded, tranquil or afraid. 

With such confirmation coming from 
hard-headed scientists, it is not hard to be¬ 
lieve that the physical expression of an 
emotion tends to increase it. If we are sad 
and give way to tears, we are sadder. If 
we are brave and do a courageous act, we 
are braver. On the other hand, the condi¬ 
tion of the body has a reflex effect on the 
mind. Professor James has answered the 
question as to bodily tension and worry in 
his own happy fashion. He says: 

“ By the sensations that so incessantly pour in 
from the over-tense excited body, the over-tense and 
excited habit of mind is kept up ; and the sultry, 
threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmos¬ 
phere never quite clears away. If you never wholly 
give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always 

[13] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


♦> 

keep your leg and body muscles half contracted for 
a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead 
of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe 
out at that—what mental mood can you be in but 
one of inner panting and expectancy, and how can 
the future and its worries possibly forsake your 
mind ? On the other hand, how can they gain 
admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, 
your respiration calm and complete, and your mus¬ 
cles all relaxed ?” 

It is surprising to see how the strain of 
everyday living can be lessened by a very 
little thought given to this matter of relaxing. 
With those who are grown up, the perfect 
muscle control which should have been in¬ 
cluded in their childhood’s training, and was 
not, must be acquired by systematic practice. 
But even the partial control that results from 
a momentary attention to the subject now 
and then through the day saves much wear 
and tear. Use a chair, not as a perching 
[ 14] 






A TALK ON RELAXATION 


place between activities, but as a comfort¬ 
able device for resting the muscles; use a 
carriage or a street car or a train, not 
merely as a means of conveyance between 
two given points, but as a blessed provision 
for rest, with muscles off guard and mind 
quiet, and a busy hurried day can be car¬ 
ried to completion without undue strain. 
Use a bed at night, not for the incomplete 
rest that many get, whose heads uncon¬ 
sciously are held on their pillows, and 
whose bodies are rigid with unnecessary 
muscular contraction, but for that delicious, 
refreshing rest that one may see any day 
in a comfortable family puss, completely 
surrendered to the comfort of a soft corner, 
without a trace of tension from the end of a 
gray nose to the tip of a furry tail. Such a 
relaxed giving up of one’s self to an inviting 


* [15] 








A TALK ON RELAXATION 


« . 

bed means much more refreshing sleep 
through the night, much greater capacity 
for work in the morning. 

With a few simple suggestions like these, 
our visitor at the clinic departed. When she 
reported the next week, she walked in quietly 
and there was a much more rested look on 
her face. After the exercises, which she did 
less strenuously than usual, in reply to a 
comment on her improved appearance, she 
said: “ Relaxation acts like a charm with me. 
I have actually done more work this week 
than last, and had many more difficulties to 
meet, but I am not nearly so tired. Econo¬ 
mizing nerve-force pays.” 

Assuredly, economizing nerve-force does 
pay. So many of the suffering ones who 
come to the church clinics to find relief have 
their wasteful spending of nervous energy to 
[* 6 ] 



A TALK ON RELAXATION 


thank for their condition; so many more 
throughout the country are wretched for the 
sume reason, that it would be a good thing 
for this intense generation, wherever it wan¬ 
ders, to have to face warning signs like these: 
“Don’t be a nervous spendthrift. Bank¬ 
ruptcy is torture! ” “ Don’t use a sledge 

hammer to drive a tack! ” “ Hurry less and 

work more.” “ Worry is a slave-driver. 
Don’t be its slave.” “ Do the day’s work, 
then forget it.” 

All these maxims for right living would 
be simply another way of saying, “ Relax.” 
True relaxation, with common sense as its 
basis, is a preparation for better work, not 
an excuse for shirking or laziness. It is well, 
too, to remember in this connection that 
while the usual tendency of our particular 
generation is to crowd more into a day than 
117 ] 







A TALK ON RELAXATION 


logically belongs to it, very often the error 
in our way of living that results in nervous 
disturbance is not so much what we do as 
the way we do it. Brains and bodies, it is 
true, are not quite adjusted to the new con¬ 
ditions which make life so much more com¬ 
plex for us than for our grandmothers. 
Time-saving inventions by the score, which 
allow us to concentrate in one day the ex¬ 
periences that would formerly have lasted a 
week, render both business and pleasure 
more strenuous than ever before. But we 
must make the best of our environment; and 
since we cannot, if we would, banish top- 
speed trains and automobiles, and wireless 
telegraphy, and the other nerve-wearing 
inventions that yet mean so much comfort, 
we must adapt ourselves to the new condi¬ 
tions, and learn to remain well by using our 
118] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


nerve force so as to keep the supply equal to 
the demand. 

Most of us, through ignorance, put our 
physical and mental machinery to much un¬ 
necessary strain. We push and drive and 
force, wasting double the energy needed, on 
just the simple things of routine living. I 
once watched a friend of mine, who had been 
nervously run down for several years, getting 
a Sunday-night tea when the maid was out. 
We had the whole evening before us, but 
she hurried from pantry to kitchen, down 
cellar for the canned fruit and up, into the 
dining-room and out, as if her life depended 
on saving sixty seconds. Not one motion 
did she make without using more force than 
she needed. She fretted about the short¬ 
comings of the maid as she worked, and 
took no comfort in her dainty meal because 
[19] 





A TALK ON RELAXATION 


.■=< 

an unimportant bottle of olives had been for¬ 
gotten in the Saturday ordering. After supper 
she hurried through the dishes, at a pace that 
made me breathless, so as to join the rest of 
the family in singing. But by the time she 
was ready, she had tired herself out com¬ 
pletely and had to go to bed. 

The most casual observer could see that 
she had come by her nervous exhaustion 
honestly. No nervous system as delicately 
balanced as hers could stand such driving as 
she had been guilty of for years without 
protesting. She knew a great deal about 
machinery, and when she realized that she 
herself was a dynamo with only a certain 
amount of force at her command; that it 
was much more serious to waste human 
energy, since she had only one dynamo to 
use for life, than to waste material energy, 

I 2 0] 






A TALK ON RELAXATION 


which might always be obtained for the price 
of a new dynamo, she began to live more 
easily and sensibly, and to gain in health 
rapidly. 

Not many of us in this busy twentieth 
century are entirely free from this pennywise, 
pound-foolish habit of chronic hurrying. We 
dash from this duty to that with no interval 
of leisure. We take even our pleasure strenu¬ 
ously, and we make our very vacations so 
laborious that work itself seems a vacation 
after them. The pace at which we go is as 
exhausting as Alice’s mad race with the Red 
Queen which leaves them just where they 
were when they started. Alice ventures to 
suggest that in her country when you run a 
long time you get somewhere. “ A slow sort 
of country,” is the Queen’s scornful reply. 
“ Now, here , you see, it takes all the running 
[21] 





A TALK ON RELAXATION 


» > ■■ .-.—( 

you can do to keep in the same place. If 
you want to get somewhere else you must 
run at least twice as fast as that.” 

If this perpetual hurrying really saved 
time, it would be more excusable; but it 
does not. We cannot keep body and brain 
constantly at the highest pressure and get 
the best out of them. We must keep the 
true balance between effort and rest to main¬ 
tain our highest efficiency. If not, nature 
will step in and, through a nervous break¬ 
down or in some other equally unpleasant 
way, force the rest upon us that we were 
foolish enough to neglect. In overcoming 
this useless hurry, mere physical relaxation 
is of great service. 

A friend who turns off more work easily 
than anyone else I know gave her antidote 
for hurry, as follows: 

1 22] 







A TALK ON RELAXATION 


“When I have so much on hand that 
I feel as if the day’s duties were rushing 
on me like a locomotive; when I begin to 
think that the whole train of human des¬ 
tiny will be wrecked if I fail in the least 
particular, I go upstairs for five minutes, 
read a joke in a little joke-book that I keep 
for the purpose, and then throw myself 
down on the bed, relaxing every muscle 
from head to toe, keeping my thoughts all 
the time on the joke. Then I think quietly 
of the work before me and plan what to 
do first and second and third. I remind 
myself that I need do only one thing at a 
time, and that each thing may be made a 
pleasure, and that my business is to do it 
as well as I can without concern for the 
result. Then I start work again with the 
stress and strain all gone, and accomplish 
[23] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


»> . - . =i 

much more than I possibly could under the 
pressure of worry.” 

Another friend, who is in a very respon¬ 
sible position, which involves at irregular 
intervals a prodigious amount of work in a 
short time, usually comes through the ordeal 
with undiminished serenity. As I watched 
her one day flying from this thing to that, 
directing one person here, another there, 
keeping forty threads of thought in her mind 
at once, I asked her how she did it. “ I never 
hurry with my mind,” was her enlightening 
comment. 

For any of us living a normal life in a 
normal world, of course, occasions do arise 
when it would be worse than foolish not to 
hurry, when we must direct every atom of 
energy we possess to one end, to accomplish 
some important result. It is wise then to get 
[24] 



A TALK ON RELAXATION 


the good of the experience by not hurrying in 
our minds. For such crises come into every 
workaday life to redeem it from monotony. 
The man who lets a good piece of business 
slip through his fingers, the woman who 
loses her opportunity for a larger experience 
rather than break the rule of never hurrying, 
would be as foolish as the benighted gentle¬ 
man who had gone to his office the same 
way for forty years, and who, rather than 
break this rule when a bridge was down, 
preferred wading the stream and risking 
pneumonia to changing his route. Occa¬ 
sional hurry is like a tonic, as good for one’s 
mental health as a brisk run for a growing 
child. But chronic hurry without the balance 
of complete rest will wear out the strongest 
nerves. 

Again, we must remember that we have 
I 25 1 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


~.=■. ^ 

limits. Some of us have forty horse-power, 
some twenty. Very likely we are not getting 
all the speed we might out of ourselves, and 
obedience to a few simple laws of mental 
hygiene will give us much more efficiency. But 
still the twenty-horse-power people are not the 
forty-horse-power ones, and wise living for 
them means keeping habitually within their 
speed limit. Then, when an emergency 
arises they have a reserve to draw upon 
which will carry them through with flying 
colors. By leaving out unessentials these 
twenty-horse-power people often have more 
to show in actual accomplishment than their 
stronger neighbors. In any case we need 
only use to the best advantage the particular 
engine we have. The rest is not our con¬ 
cern. Twenty-horse or forty-horse, each has 
his own part of the world’s work to carry on, 

126 ] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


»=■ =fr 

and who shall dare to say that any part is 
unimportant? 

Hurry, worry, fear, dread, and many other 
foes to our peace of mind involve tension. 
Tension of any kind, physical, mental, or 
moral, means unnecessary resistance—re¬ 
sistance which hinders effort and wastes 
nerve-force. When tension yields to relaxa¬ 
tion, this energy is saved for something more 
useful. A patient who had the customary 
dread of the dentist’s chair to an exaggerated 
degree, and who was usually laid up for a 
day or two after a siege with her teeth, re¬ 
ported with great satisfaction that by delib¬ 
erately relaxing every muscle in her body 
instead of bracing with her feet, clenching 
her hands, and contorting her face as usual, 
she had felt the pain much less, and had had 
none of the usual uncomfortable after-effects. 
[27] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


« .— ■ ■ -.c 

Another patient suffered greatly from embar¬ 
rassment in meeting people. She began to 
apply the principles of relaxation in various 
ways, and finally when she had gained the 
power to drop the tension of her muscles at 
will, she was delighted to find that her ex¬ 
treme self-consciousness, a lifelong difficulty, 
had vanished, and that she could meet people 
comfortably and naturally. 

Often mental tension is relieved in this 
way, indirectly, by removing the physical 
tension. Another way is to slide in a dif¬ 
ferent thought, as in a magic lantern, and 
displace the cause of the tension. If the 
mind can be directed away from the trouble¬ 
some worry for a little space, it is much easier 
afterwards to see the cause of one’s trouble 
in its true proportions. 

With nervous disorders taking hold upon 
![ 28 ] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


. zz,-,.. =fr 

the nation as never before, and threatening 
us and our friends, this subject of relaxation 
and its application is worth careful considera¬ 
tion. Nor in our enthusiasm over mental 
hygiene must we be misled into forgetting 
that it includes physical hygiene as well,— 
good food at regular intervals, exercise, sleep, 
recreation, and whatever else wise nature 
indicates for the healthy body that is the 
servant of the healthy mind. 

Merely changing wrong physical habits 
and relieving mental strain will often restore 
the nervous tone. But to keep it, there must 
be a correction of the thoughts and an intelli¬ 
gent obedience to all the laws of right living. 

One bad habit, however we label it, most 
of us share in common, — that of making 
conditions. A small boy, afterwards founder 
of a well-known sanatorium for restoring 
129] 







A TALK ON RELAXATION 


« ^=.^ 

nervous people, was on a visit to his grand¬ 
father and was tucked at bedtime into the 
great four-posted bed. His grandfather blew 
out the candle and climbed up beside him; 
whereupon the boy with great wailing ex¬ 
plained that he wished to blow the candle 
out himself. The indulgent grandfather 
hastily relit it and presented it for extinction. 
But the ungrateful little atom only wailed 
still louder: “ I wanted to blow it out before 
it was blowed out.” 

We do not recognize the folly of our own 
conditions quite so readily, but we find it 
when our eyes are opened, and we wonder 
at the infinite patience that keeps on offering 
us the blessings we so ignorantly push away. 
These conditions present themselves in all 
kinds of disguises. “If I didn’t have this 
debt,” one says, “ I should be so much more 
[30] 




A TALK ON RELAXATION 


courageous.” Yet he must have the courage 
to win his way out of debt. “ If I had a dif¬ 
ferent kind of husband,” another says, "I 
could make a happier home.” Yet this is the 
only husband she can have. “ If I were well 
and strong” is the excuse of the invalid, 
chronic or temporary, “I should be so amiable 
and sweet-tempered and helpful.” But it is 
being amiable and sweet-tempered and help¬ 
ful now, that counts. “ If only my children 
were turning out as I expected,”'the mothers 
say, and they seem very excusable in their 
sweet concern. But, after all, they are only 
making the conditions that are hindrances. 
Sometimes the temptation to make conditions 
is very subtle. “ If life were only a succes¬ 
sion of our best moments,” we exclaim, we 
should surely be optimists. Of course we 
should all like to leap from best moment to 
[31 ] 






A TALK ON RELAXATION 


♦? -< 

best moment with seven league boots, but 
still, it is the little moments in the valleys, 
when the vision is hidden and we are search¬ 
ing patiently for the lost moment, that we 
gather the strength for a better than our last 
best moment. We all have occasion to re¬ 
member Matthew Arnold’s assurance that 

“ The task * n hours of insight willed, 

May be in hours of gloom fulfilled.” 

Again, when sorrow lays its hand upon us 
and we grope in an unfamiliar world which 
is one great void of loneliness, how we all 
whisper, “If it had been anything else I 
could have borne it.” 

In an old legend the South Wind woos 
a human maid. To test her he makes him¬ 
self invisible, and bids her jump to him from 
a high tree. Her courage falters, and he 
leaves her. But later, in an hour of supreme 
[32] 



A TALK ON RELAXATION 


" " <+ 

peril, she calls on him, and with glorious 
abandon casts herself from a great height, 
only to be caught by his mighty invisible 
arms and borne away to happiness. Mak¬ 
ing excuses of inevitable conditions, what¬ 
ever their form, is only a kind of spiritual 
tension. Trust like this is its cure. Now 
is the time we need support, when we are 
poverty-stricken and tired and discouraged, 
and sorrowful and ill in mind and body. 
Now is the time it will help us to believe 
that neither “time, nor space, nor deep nor 
high can keep my own away from me.” 
With “if” out of the way, our millennium 
can begin in the hardest moment of our 
history. 

Anger, hatred, malice, uncharitableness, 
and suspicion are also forms of spiritual 
tension; in them we cannot safely indulge. 

[33] 





A TALK ON RELAXATION 


Even aside from the moral obligation, we 
cannot afford to hate our neighbor. We 
must love that neighbor as ourselves. As 
to our relation with our God, the perfect 
trust that all things work together for good 
drives out fear and relieves tension. Faith 
and trust are protectors of our nerves, and 
they may be cultivated. Religion is not to 
be locked in a compartment of our brains 
and taken out for use on Sundays. It is 
meant to give us strength each day and 
hour of our lives. It is the “practice of 
the presence of God ” that gives us tranquil¬ 
lity and serenity in the most trying circum¬ 
stances. Simple-hearted Brother Lawrence 
discovered this sovereign rule for right liv¬ 
ing. “We are,” he said, “as strictly obliged 
to adhere to God by action in the time of 
action as by prayer in the season of prayer.” 

I 34 1 






A TALK ON RELAXATION 


. - . ^ .. =& 

This French brother, who died three centu¬ 
ries ago, can very well set us the example 
of making our religion practical. To him 
fell the duty of cooking for his brethren, the 
most prosaic of occupations. But see what 
he made of it. “ His very countenance,” his 
biographer says, “was edifying; such a 
sweet and calm devotion appearing in it as 
could not but affect the beholders. It was 
observed that in the greatest hurry of busi¬ 
ness in the kitchen he still preserved his 
recollection and heavenly-mindedness. He 
was never hasty nor loitering, but did each 
thing in its season, with an even, uninter¬ 
rupted composure and tranquillity of spirit.” 
Meeting life constantly with such a front is 
the best security against nervous ills, the 
surest key to larger living. 




































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